Rolls of hygiene paper, i.e. toilet paper, hand towel paper, kitchen towel paper, industrial wiping paper and the like, are widely used. In households, small rolls with a diameter of 100-150 mm and a weight of 0.1-0.2 kg are usually used whereas in factories, offices and public localities and the like larger rolls, which often are called “jumbo rolls” and which can have a diameter of 150-400 mm and a weight from 0.2-10 kg, are used.
Traditionally, cored rolls have been used. Such rolls are produced by winding the paper around a cylindrical core, typically made of cardboard or plastic material in the form of a hollow cylinder. A drawback with cored rolls is that the presence of an empty space inside the core means that during transport and storing of such rolls a great deal of room is taken up by the cores. Another drawback is that the presence of cores in such rolls complicates the feeding of a full roll from a storage position to a dispensing position in a dispenser for a multiple of rolls, since the empty core must first be moved out of the way. A third problem with cored rolls is that the empty core must be discarded after the paper in the roll has been dispensed.
There are also known coreless rolls. Such rolls are produced by winding a paper web around a mandrel, which is extracted from the winded roll. Coreless rolls also comprise a central opening, which however have a much smaller diameter than the cores of traditional cored rolls. However, the empty space in the center of a coreless roll also takes up room during transport and storing of such rolls, to a not insignificant extent. Moreover, the loads acting on the rolls during handling, storing and transporting may often lead to deformation of the rolls and central openings therein. Such deformations may lead to difficulty of placing the coreless rolls in dispensers and/or to irregularities in the dispensing operation. An advantage with coreless rolls is that no empty core of cardboard or the like remains after dispensing of the paper in the roll.
Solid rolls, which have been introduced recently on the market, do not comprise a core or a central through-going opening, but the central portion of the roll is filled with paper web. A finished solid roll of paper web has the form of a solid cylinder completely filled with paper web and has an essentially homogenous appearance when viewed from the side. The density range of a solid roll is 140-380 kg/m3. The density of the roll is dependent on the tension in the paper web during winding and it may vary slightly for technical reasons. It is of course possible to intentionally vary the tension in the web in order to vary the density of the produced solid roll, for example in order to have a different density in a central portion than in a peripheral portion. A machine and a method for manufacturing of solid paper rolls are, for example, known from EP 0580561.
In addition to not having a core to be discarded and no central empty space to take room during transport and storing, solid rolls have the further advantage of containing more paper web than cored or coreless rolls having the same size. The use of solid rolls has therefore several advantages.
WO 2004/056250 A1 discloses a dispenser that is specifically constructed for solid paper rolls. This dispenser comprises two projections fitted on opposite dispenser walls between the winding of the roll in or near the center thereof to define a rotational axis.
However, dispensers for hygiene paper rolls are often constructed for dispensing cored rolls so that solid or coreless rolls can not be used in such dispensers. One way to overcome this problem is to provide the coreless or solid rolls with adapters enabling such rolls to be used in dispensers of traditional construction, in which the rolls are suspended to rotate around a determined rotational axis when paper web is drawn out from the dispenser.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,664 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,386,479 B1 disclose adapters for solid paper rolls intended to be inserted in central recesses in the rolls defining a rotational axis. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,082,664 the adapters consist of a body having protrusions on opposite end portions whereby one end protrusion is to be inserted into the central recess in the roll and the other protrusion is to be inserted into a slot in the side wall of the dispenser. The protrusions holding the roll between them is urged by a spring device towards each other. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,386,479 two pairs of pins are protruding from the legs of a U-shaped arm. In each pair of pins, one pin is to be inserted into a central recess of the solid roll and the other into a slot in a dispenser wall.
An objective of the present invention is to provide an adapter for a solid hygiene paper roll which is of a simple construction, can easily be adapted to traditional dispensers, does not deform or penetrate the roll and does not need a central hole or recesses in the roll to be functional. A further object of the invention is to provide such an adapter which also can be used for coreless rolls.